


At the closing of the day

by valiantfindekano



Category: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (Video Game), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 06:13:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4553835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valiantfindekano/pseuds/valiantfindekano
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The One Ring has been destroyed; Talion has difficulty deciding what to do next. The wraith that still shares his body is not making anything easier. (100% ship trash fic with a good amount of Celebrimbor's Shadow of Mordor background and a few other details swapped out for something closer to Tolkien canon)</p>
            </blockquote>





	At the closing of the day

The halfling destroying the Ring under their very noses is, perplexingly, not the end of their difficulties. Talion cannot say how many nights he has lain awake considering the irony of this. There are still orcs roaming about the southern kingdoms, some of them still bearing his brand, but they are no longer able to be cowed into serving chieftains and are thus hardly worth being called a threat.

To his own horror, Talion’s problems are simpler now. Domestic, even. If Mordor was inhospitable, it is now entirely uninhabitable, though in time it may recover. Collapsing in on itself, however, he and Lithariel barely managed to escape with their lives. Ah, but rather—he, Lithariel, and Celebrimbor.

The wraith has not left him.

The abandoned farmhouse near the old Harad Road is starting to feel a bit like home, though it cannot be much more than a month or two since they moved in. Talion would have preferred to worm his way into Minas Tirith to see the new King restored, but he cannot see how he would be welcomed when reports have had him aiding outlaws and walking with orcs at his back. Lithariel would be considered little better than an outlaw herself, and that maybe holds Talion back more than any concern for his own safety. Celebrimbor presents his own set of problems.

One day there are flowers blooming outside the doorstep. Talion imagines gathering them, presenting them in a bouquet… Ioreth would have loved this cottage. She deserved a palace, but she would have filled the stone walls with such life and charm. Dirhael would have hated it, on the other hand, and privately Talion would have agreed with his son.

Lithariel’s hands are stained with rabbit blood when she catches him staring at the little white blossoms. “Are they useful?” she asks.

Talion nods while biting back a smile. “Very,” he answers solemnly, then leans down to pluck one away from its roots. Carefully, he moves to tuck it into one of Lithariel’s braids, and takes a moment to appreciate her bemused expression.

Before either of them can make further comment, a flash of silver emerges next to Talion, disappearing again beyond the corners of the house. Both of them raise their eyebrows; their companion is no less dramatic for the loss of his sworn enemy. Maybe even he is a little lost, but gruff-voiced and critical, he can be difficult to deal with.

“Perhaps I should…” Talion sighs. He and Celebrimbor are each others’ charges. Without the elf, he would be dead, and without him, the elf would be a houseless wraith consumed by anger and torment. It is a curious arrangement, without a doubt.

Lithariel gestures with her bloody hands, indicating she is busy anyway.

Celebrimbor is hovering around the side of the house, as Talion had expected. They’ve been together long enough for him to know when he is being cued. But it interests him that the wraith’s appearance has changed somewhere between fleeing Mordor and settling in the peaceful south. The sharp-plated armour is gone; in its place are embroidered robes, fields of eight-pointed stars against velvet, echoes of gems glinting at his collar and his fingers. It makes Talion reconsider what his friend might have been while he lived—not a soldier like him, but a Lord, a man who once looked to make beautiful things. Sometimes even the scars seem to fade from Celebrimbor’s ghostly appearance, and it surprises Talion how young he looks without them.  

“What’s this about?” Talion folds his arms across his chest.

“If you marry her, I will have to marry her as well.” Celebrimbor mirrors the gesture.

“Marriage is not quite what I had in mind,” Talion corrects gently. He is already a married man. Lithariel cannot replace Ioreth, nor would he ask her to. Between them, it is only a matter of companionship, which his wife would not begrudge him. Maybe Celebrimbor should be questioning his faithfulness, though; Talion thinks that it would help him to have to defend his choice.

But instead—and it is no surprise—Celebrimbor gives him a cryptic line, something that sounds like a warning or a threat.

It has been a while since the elf revealed he had never truly had a wife or child, that they had been lies to persuade Talion to assist him, and Talion is still undecided on whether or not that is worth forgiving. Mostly he thinks it was unnecessary; he would have acted in order to find his own revenge regardless of Celebrimbor’s past. He does not appreciate being deceived, in any case, but among the hurts the past few years have laid on him, it is a relatively minor offence.

“Is there some rite of marriage between elves that I am unaware of?” Talion adds, deciding he might as well play along for now.

“It is sealed by the act,” Celebrimbor answers. “The union of the  _hröar_  is also the union of  _fëar_ —in your terms that would be mind and body. We share a body, a _hröa_ …”

Talion can’t help but narrow his eyes. “You worry that you would be wed to her, if we were to …?”

Celebrimbor answers with a strange flickering glance, and Talion gives a quiet huff of laughter. Really, it would serve the wraith right for taking him as a host without considering all the potential consequences. It concerns him more what Lithariel would think of having an undead elf privy to their relations, and even before now it has been a source of hesitation in pursuing her.

“So did you have other prospects, Celebrimbor?” He is only half joking as he asks. Twenty years ago it might have amused him to think that this could be his way of enjoying the company of a beautiful elven princess. Even if he was not married—either by Talion’s definition of it or Celebrimbor’s—an elf of such fame must have had some kind of suitors.

“Not anymore,” Celebrimbor replies after a second. He must see that Talion means to tell him to continue, because he gives a resigned sigh. “My romantic history is not impressive. I told you I was unwed…”

Talion grins. “A virgin,” he calculates.

“…Approximately.”

Now that is interesting. Talion would not have anticipated such a confession—but then what does ‘approximately’ mean in this context? With what he has assumed about elvish prudishness, Celebrimbor might very well be referring to a kiss, or he might imply something more sordid. “When I was a boy I thought that I loved a girl named Edhellos,” Talion shares, “but she wanted nothing to do with me, so I fooled around with a southern girl who worked at the docks of Pelargir. She was the one that made me a man, as it were. It lasted a few years, and then I thought I would dedicate myself purely to the service of the Rangers until I was introduced to Ioreth.”

The story has the desired effect—Talion can always tell when Celebrimbor is resigned to sharing parts of his past. He never talks about his family, and Talion knows little enough history to fill it in for himself, but sometimes things will slip through.

“Do you know the country of Lothlórien?” Celebrimbor asks. Talion shakes his head, but somehow before his eyes conjures an image of a forest with golden leaves on silver branches, twinkling with lights and blooming like the sun. “The Lady of the Wood should have been Queen of the Elves. She is the fairest and wisest of all our kindred, and I loved her hopelessly while she loved another…”

Talion cannot help but wonder if the wife that Celebrimbor had lied about is based on this woman. That is a different kind of sadness, he realises, and he tries to imagine his own disappointment at losing Edhellos amplified to the enduring regret of an elf’s lifetime. “Was she the only one?”

Celebrimbor turns away slightly. “Not exactly.” Again with the vague answers. He must be hiding something. “I cannot tell you about the other. They looked to be wed no more than I did, and yet I craved their affection, their validation. It led me to actions I wish now I could take back.”

As the wraith takes another step away, it occurs to Talion that Celebrimbor is leading him away from where Lithariel works; he has strayed step by step almost unknowingly, and now it is doubtful that she could pick up the words that either of them are speaking. For a second Talion fears that Celebrimbor means also to confess a love for her, but then he reasons that the elf would not have raised his complaints in the first place if such was the case. Whatever complicated confession he is about to hear, it will not be that.

“Did you find it hard to love when you were consumed by anger and vengeance?” Celebrimbor continues.

“It was not a priority,” Talion concedes. The object of his heart’s passion was lost to him, after all, so where was he to direct such feelings? He is still not certain he would describe his feelings for Lithariel as love—respect, certainly, admiration, no small amount of fascination, but he can go nights without aching to be beside her and he thinks he would hesitate to try and move the mountains for her sake.

“Four thousand years,” Celebrimbor says. “I worry that I have forgotten. I worry that it does not matter, and then I am lost–”

“That you are only anger now,” Talion finishes.

“Yes.”

Celebrimbor vanishes.

Talion is left with a slight sense of anxiety in the pit of his stomach—a confession of losing sight of love, after all, is not what he would describe as comforting words of parting—but before he has time to consider it too deeply, the wraith is suddenly standing before him. His appearance is marginally less frightening now with the embroidery and the gems and faded scars than it was in Mordor, but it still causes the ranger to jump.

“I never cared to be physical,” Celebrimbor says, “until it was no longer an option to me. Would you let me try something…?”

Talion takes a step backwards, suddenly wary. “That will depend.”

“A kiss?”

And at that, Talion blinks. Should Celebrimbor not be asking Lithariel? She must be the closer to his elven Queen between the two of them. It had never bothered Talion to know that some of the other rangers would seek company together, but it had not been something he had ever thought to seek out for himself, even before his marriage to Ioreth, but this offer is still different; he tries to imagine the living elf he has never known instead of the shade, and it does not necessarily bring him any sense of revulsion, but of course it is more complicated than that.

It is complicated because of Lithariel, and it is complicated because of Ioreth and this queen that Celebrimbor loved. It is complicated because Celebrimbor can hold no physical form without Talion, and yet the elf will outlast him. Still, Talion finds himself stepping forward to meet Celebrimbor, who raises a ghostly hand to hover by his cheek. It is not threatening in the way that hand had once been to the orcs they dominated, but hesitant, tender.

Had he been dark-haired once, or fair like the Eorlings? Would his cheeks have been flushed red as he leans in, and would they have highlighted eyes of vibrant blue, cold silver? Talion finds himself imagining a warm shade of brown, but then Celebrimbor’s eyes appear closed as he brings his lips to hover next to Talion’s.

There is no warm breath. Only a sense of coldness, a suggestion in the ranger’s mind of what a kiss might feel like, and he finds himself holding in his own breath lest his exhale disrupt Celebrimbor. His own eyes close, too.

When they open, Celebrimbor is no longer before him. But the sense of fullness and power brimming in his chest tells him that the wraith has not fled completely.

Oh, he thinks,  _oh._

Difficulties indeed.  


End file.
